Page 57 of Song of the Crimson Flower

Lan glanced at him, wondering if he was thinking about his betrothed holding hands with Commander Wei, but there was no more time to talk. Huong pushed open a section of the wall and they found themselves in a clean, well-lit building full of pallets. There were perhaps thirty orforty people lying on the pallets, and they all looked at the new arrivals in shock. Lan realized that they had gone through the wall in the bedchamber and emerged through yet another wall.

“Where is Mistress Vy?” Huong demanded, scanning their faces.

“She’s in the garden,” said one of the workers, a young woman with a heart-shaped face. She put her hands on her hips. “Who are you?”

“Where is her son, Bao?” the witch persisted, ignoring the question.

“The young man who came in with her? I’m not sure. They went upstairs, but I didn’t see him leave when she did...”

Neither Lan nor Huong waited to hear her finish her sentence. They were already running for the stairs.I’m coming, Bao, Lan thought. The upper level had another thirty or forty patients, most of them sleeping as more gray-uniformed workers moved in between their pallets. Several of the workers came forward, protesting and trying to block their way, but Huong made short work of them, employing the same trick she had used on the people in the kitchens. On the stairs, Lan heard Lord Nguyen dealing with the young woman downstairs.

“Bao!” she called desperately, but none of the faces staring up at her from the pallets were his. They were men and women, young and old, some still clinging to the pallor of sickness. And then, at the far wall, she saw a row of beds where the patients’ elbows hung over basins. She realized, shocked, that all of them had deep cuts in the crooks of their arms, just as Huong had. These were the patients that Vy was bleeding for her formula.

They looked weakly at Lan as she ran past, studying their faces. Finally, she came to the last bed along the wall and saw a familiar long, lanky figure, lying with arms and legs tied to the bed frame.

“Bao!” she cried, running over to him.

Bao did not awaken, but continued to lie spread-eagled. The sleevesof his tunic had been rolled above his elbows, and a deep red stain had seeped through the cloths wrapped around the crooks of his arms. His face was expressionless, and his head lolled limply over one shoulder. The bamboo flute lay beside him on the bed, barely visible in the gathering shadows.

“Please be alive,” Lan pleaded, throwing all propriety to the winds as she climbed onto the bed with him. “Bao, wake up. I’m here with your aunt Huong. Can you hear me?”

But Bao did not move. His skin was ice-cold, and when Lan’s hand brushed the flute, she realized that it was as warm as his body should have been. She felt for a pulse in his wrists and his neck and pressed her ear against his chest, but there was nothing—no pulse, no heartbeat.

“No, no, no!” She grabbed his shoulders and shook him, but his head only rolled limply from side to side. No breath emerged from his nose or mouth. “Huong! Huong, please help!” But the witch did not respond, and downstairs, Lan heard Lord Nguyen yelling and the unmistakable sound of Huong fending off Vy’s guards and workers with her magic.

Lan was on her own, and she was too late.

She pressed her lips to Bao’s cold forehead, shoulders shaking with sobs. “Come back to me,” she whispered, her heart shattering. In all the time they had traveled together, she’d had so many opportunities to tell him what she felt: how she respected him, how much his kindness and compassion moved her, and how easily she could see why her father and grandmother had admired him. The world had denied him much, but he had always given generously of himself. She wanted to tell him that being loved by someone with a heart as beautiful as his had been the greatest honor, and now she might not ever have the chance.

Lan buried her face in his pillow and sobbed with heartbreak and frustration. They had wasted precious time searching Vy’s house, andthe evil woman had been hiding him here all along. If only they had come sooner. If only Bao had never left the river market. If only Lan had loved him from the beginning.

What has passed is past.

She heard the words as clearly as though her grandmother had spoken them into her ear. She lifted her tearful face and realized suddenly that Bao wasn’t wearing the charm Huong had made for him. She looked around the bed in a frenzy, but saw nothing, and so she stripped her own amulet from her chest and slid the chain over his head. She held her breath, waiting for something—anything—to happen to him or to her.

“Bao, please,” Lan begged. It hurt too much to look at his lifeless face, so she curled up beside him with her cheek over his silent heart. “I’m sorry I wasted so much time. I’m sorry I never saw how wonderful you were. This past week has been...” She broke off, overcome with tears. She could not possibly put into words the storm of feelings inside her. But she had to try, just in case somewhere deep inside him was a spark of life listening to her. “Love isn’t waiting for someone to remember me. Love isn’t dreaming about them all alone. Love is talking together, forgiving each other, finding common threads in the lives we want. I’ve learned that now. You taught me.”

She wrapped her arms around his cold body, wishing he would hold her back. She would give anything for just one minute of their eyes meeting, hands touching, and hearts stirring again.

But he wasn’t moving, and when she blinked away her tears, she saw that he was fading.

The flute grew even warmer in her hand, pulling the life from him. She wanted to destroy it, to break it in two, for what it had done to him. “Forgive me for my cowardice,” she told him, her voice breaking, “but the last time I gave my heart, I was badly hurt. I was afraid I had lostyour good opinion forever. I was afraid that once I told you how I felt, you would turn away from me. I was afraid I would only ever be a memory to you.”

The outline of Bao’s body grew fainter, even though she was holding on to him with all her strength. Sobs shook Lan’s body. The full moon wasn’t until tomorrow night, but whatever had happened to him—whether it was Vy bleeding him or the charm being lost—was bringing the spell to completion. She had run out of time.

Lan’s head sank back onto his chest. She would stay with him until it was over; she would hold him and talk to him and give him what comfort she could, if he could even hear or feel any of it. “I shouted at your aunt in the prison, you know,” she whispered. “I told her off for casting the spell on you, for putting you in this situation. But now I realize that if she hadn’t done that, you would have gone off forever. You would never have come back to me.”

Outside, another explosion went off, and the building shivered around them.

She wiped her eyes. “It turns out the witch gave me a second chance. And if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have lost my heart to you. Bao, don’t go. Don’t let those nights on the river be the last time we were happy. I want new nights with you.” She had never imagined such fierceness in herself, but her vow came out like a battle cry. “You have my whole heart, and no witch and no enchantment will ever take that from you. I love you.”

“Little yellow flower,” Bao whispered. “You crossed the grass...”

Lan’s head snapped up. He was pale, so pale and weak, but his red-rimmed eyes had cracked open and the corners of his mouth lifted as he looked at her. “Bao?” she asked shakily. His breath stirred the hairs around her face. Beneath her fingers, his heart began to beat a faintrhythm. She choked back a sob, praying with everything in her that she wasn’t imagining this—that this wasn’t some sort of dream concocted by her hopeful, broken heart.

“Am I in the heavens?” he asked. “Will I be able to see earth from here?”

“No,” she said, laughing through her tears, “you are still on earth. With me.” She felt him growing warmer in her arms, felt his hand stroking her braid. She uttered a prayer of thanks to every god in the heavens. They had given Bao back to her; they had given her yet another chance. The skin beneath his eyes was so thin, she could see his fragile purple veins. He murmured her name, and she held on to him even more tightly, daring death to take him from her.

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